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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, July 1998, p. 1938-1941, Vol. 36, No. 7
Department of Microbiology, University of
Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom,1 and
Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, University
of Cologne, Cologne, Germany2
Received 3 February 1998/Returned for modification 12 March
1998/Accepted 7 April 1998
Acinetobacter spp. are important
nosocomial pathogens reported with increasing frequency in outbreaks of
cross-infection during the past 2 decades. The majority of such
outbreaks are caused by Acinetobacter
baumannii. To investigate whether desiccation tolerance
may be involved in the ability of certain strains of A. baumannii to cause hospital outbreaks, a blind study was
carried out with 39 epidemiologically well-characterized clinical
isolates of A. baumannii for which survival
times were determined under simulated hospital conditions. The survival
times on glass coverslips of 22 strains isolated from eight
well-defined hospital outbreaks in a German metropolitan area were
compared with the survival times of 17 sporadic strains not involved
in outbreaks but rather isolated from inpatients in the same
geographic area. All sporadic isolates have been shown by pulsed-field
gel electrophoresis to represent different strain types. There was no
statistically significant difference between the survival times of
sporadic strains of A. baumannii and outbreak
strains (27.2 versus 26.5 days, respectively; P
0095-1137/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Survival of Acinetobacter
baumannii on Dry Surfaces: Comparison of Outbreak and
Sporadic Isolates
0.44) by the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test. All investigated A. baumannii strains, irrespective of their areas of
endemicity or epidemic occurrence, have the ability to survive for a
long time on dry surfaces. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing showed that A. baumannii outbreak strains were
significantly more resistant to various broad-spectrum antimicrobial
agents than sporadic strains. Both desiccation tolerance and multidrug
resistance may contribute to their maintenance in the hospital setting
and may explain in part their propensity to cause prolonged outbreaks
of nosocomial infection.
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Microbiology, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom.
Phone: 44-113-2335594. Fax: 44-113-2335649. E-mail:
j.heritage{at}leeds.ac.uk.
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